Parents question immersion program changes

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Trafik

My daughter just completed her fifth year in Newby's TWI program. She will be a fifth-grader in the 2013-2014 school year. As a result of the program, she is almost completely fluent now in both Spanish and English.

One of the parents' chief issues with these program changes stem from the district's changing story regarding the origins of the TWI program. We were told when we enrolled our daughter five years ago, that TWI was a true dual-immersion program, designed to produce children who were dual-lingual. Now we are told that the program was envisioned as primarily a boost to ELLs (English Language Learners), who would flourish side-by-side with native-Engish-speakers.

We believe that any public school program should benefit all its students, not primarily one limited group. If the nature of the TWI program is as the district now describes, we resent not being told that our children were essentially being used to boost the ELL program, with the secondary benefit of gaining Spanish fluency.